Patrick Neill found­ed the com­pa­ny which was to become Neill & Co on 7 Decem­ber 1749 in Edin­burgh. It occu­pied premis­es in Old Fish­mar­ket Close off the High Street for many years.

The Edin­burgh sta­tionery and print­ing firm of George Water­ston & Sons was estab­lished on 6 Decem­ber 1752. Orig­i­nal­ly seal­ing wax man­u­fac­tur­ers, the com­pa­ny soon moved into sta­tionery production .

30 Octo­ber 1577 Thomas Bassen­dyne died in Edin­burgh on 30 Octo­ber 1577. Togeth­er with Alexan­der Arbuth­not, he print­ed the first trans­la­tion of the Bible in Scot­land, known as the Bassen­dyne Bible. The New Tes­ta­ment, print­ed by Bassen­dyne, was com­plet­ed first, and the Bible as a whole is known as ‘the Bassen­dyne Bible’.

William Ged died in Edin­burgh on 19 Octo­ber 1749. He had trained as a gold­smith, but pio­neered a sys­tem of stereo­typ­ing, though he was unsuc­cess­ful in per­suad­ing print­ers to adopt it. It became a stan­dard process ear­ly in the 19th century. 

On 15 Sep­tem­ber 1507 James IV grant­ed Wal­ter Chep­man and Andro Myl­lar a licence to set up a print­ing press in Edinburgh.